Illustration by Sajan Rai

The Treaty of Finsbury Park 2025 is a future event in which a multi-species delegation negotiates an unprecedented mutual agreement on behalf of all organisms in the face of an unprecedented threat. It is conceived as part of Furtherfield’s Citizen Sci-Fi program, and is centred around the 2020-21 theme, Love Machines. At Summer Solstice 2021, we will play a game with various characters to imagine Finsbury Park as the site of multi-species revolution across urban green space. This will be played as a Live Action Role Play (LARP).

A visiting delegation of artists, equipped with park blueprints, bylaws, data-sources, historical documents, and policies, will work with local envoys who present testimony from the many human and non-human lives of the park. Together, the two parties will work to mutually devise a treaty culminating in a public ceremonial treaty signing event to govern the future actions of multispecies park users, turning the park itself into a “love machine”.

Part role play game, part participatory performance, this event will be based at Furtherfield Commons and across Finsbury Park. Originally planned for the Summer of 2020, the first community meetings took place in March, however Covid-19 has paused the development of this project. The game, final treaty, audio recordings, photographs, and resulting artistic responses are now planned for development and exhibition at Furtherfield in the Summer of 2021.

Read the essay – The Treaty of Finsbury Park 2025: On systems, ecologies as networks, colonialism and seizing rituals of power.

Listen to the discussion between Ruth and Cade on the Furtherfield Podcast

More LARPs

Now London Is A City Farm…  for Algorithmic Food Justice with Sara Heitlinger, Lara Houston and Alex Taylor, 2019

The Road To Budgetary Blockchain Bliss with Ben Vickers, MoneyLab#3 2016